


Barkeeping and Other Jobs

by shadowcat500



Series: Wanderlust [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, as you can probably guess, considering its. you know. a bar., mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23552377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowcat500/pseuds/shadowcat500
Summary: The Piranha gets her second crewmember.
Series: Wanderlust [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693201
Kudos: 1





	Barkeeping and Other Jobs

**Author's Note:**

> I have never done barkeeping. Please take this into account.

Karn is not a cowardly man.

Three tours of duty and two missing fingers to show for it, dozens of enemy soldiers crushed under his war-mace and the guts to bail from the city that drafted him into it all add up to a job bartending in the worst part of Bluecliff. At least the pay is somewhat good, as long as he puts any fights that break out outside before they do any damage to the building. And if anyone finishes the Mainsail, he gets to break the mug, which is always fun.

The crowd is loud tonight, a half-dozen strider crews making themselves known to every whore in the neighbourhood and every bar near the docks. These ones pay honestly, if nothing else. A few have asked for the Mainsail Special, their crewmates crowding around and cheering them on. Said sailors are currently passed out with a couple pocket-gulls crowding ‘round for a peck at their unprotected pockets. Karn would probably try to keep them out if their bosses didn’t give him the bonuses his own wouldn’t give him. 

A girl struts up, cotton-candy-pink hair braided down her back and a black bandanna wrapped round her forehead, and yells an order over the noise: “How much for a Blacksail?” 

“Ten credits.” Karn turns to start making the drink.

The girl has the credits ready for him the second he turns back, drink in hand, and hands them over without a seeming care, taking the tar-black mug with ease. Karn doesn’t bet on seeing her again: she has the face of a wanderer, not a sailor.

***

He’s proven wrong when he comes to break a fight the evening after, and finds her doing her level best to make some poor sailor regret meeting her via the classic method of fist vs face. He picks her up by the scruff of her shirt like an unruly kitten, and she kicks back hard enough to make him think she must have been a kangaroo in a previous life.

He doesn’t drop her though, even though she struggles to escape through the entire walk of shame. (He’ll be back for the other guy once she’s out. From the look of him, he won't be going anywhere while Karn's gone.) She stops struggling around three-quarters of the way to the door, and starts trying to talk him out of kicking her out. “It’s not my fault the jackass decided to grab my ass when all I wanted was a chat with my buyer!”

Karn is barely listening when he responds. “Not my problem.”

“What kind of woman would I be to let him get away with that!” He doesn’t slow down. “C’mon, at _least_ tell me where the nearest inn is!”

He drops her on the steps outside. “The Pidge and Popper, along the bay. Can’t miss it. Now get going.”

He doesn’t wait for a response before going back inside.

***

He hears about a robbery the next day, some rich lady’s jewels vanished and an open window up the hill. He shrugs it off. Rich folk never learn.

***

She shows up the next night, eyes bright in the lamplight and a slight sluggishness to her movements that says she wasn’t sober even before she came in. “Wh, what’ss the strongest thing you got?” 

“Mainsail Special. Knocks most men out cold for eighteen.”

“Credits?”

“Forty.”

He watches her stagger for a second when she leans back to take the notes out of her pocket and is certain she’ll be gull-food before the night’s out. She hands him the notes. He turns to make the drink and hears the crowd start to gather.

“Hey, little skinny bitch here’s ‘bout to take on the Mainsail!” 

“Have you smelt that stuff? It smells like paint stripper and tastes _worse_!”

“I think the mug’s bigger than she is!”

She turns and yells at the gathering hecklers. “I fucked all ya moms, jackasses!”

He hands the drink to her before the jeers get louder, thinks for a moment on the state of the bar’s customers at this point and decides that watching this tiny little thing take on the Mainsail is the most fun he’ll have before his shift’s over. 

She pauses for a moment, sniffs the drink and wrinkles her nose up before taking a deep breath and starting the chug. 

“She’s doing it!”

“Christ, Jamie couldn’t take more than half that thing before choking!”

She slams it on the bar counter and wipes the foam from the top of her lip. The crowd erupts in cheers as Karn takes the mug and throws it to the ground, the crash echoing through the room.

Looks like she’s tougher than he thought.

***

The next night, the girl asks him for a favour. “I’m looking for a guy to do a job with me. You seem like the right kind of guy.”

“Look lady, I don’t do ‘jobs’ to anyone-”

“Not- not _that_ kind of job, ok?!”

At his raised eyebrow, she stammers on. “Look. I just- I just need someone to hold a rope steady for an hour, and be able to run when that hour’s up. Sound like your kind of gig?”

Karn pauses in polishing a glass. He _could_ take a night off. “What’s the pay?”

“Twenty-five percent of the cut.”

“What’s the cut?”

“Anywhere from six hundred to a thousand credits.”

Karn earns twenty credits an hour. But rolling over for a hired gig for some random chick doesn’t get you anywhere. “Make that thirty percent and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

***

The girl introduces herself as Ginohana, which he immediately shortens to Gin. 

Gin explains the plan: they are going to sneak on top of the local townhouse, Gin is going to tie a rope around her waist, and he needs to hold the rope steady for a bit while she descends down a pillar. She will untie the rope, and he needs to hold it there while she does stuff inside the building, and he needs to pull her up when she tugs twice on the rope. Simple.

It's not exactly his first less-than-legal job from a shady bar customer. It’s just the first one he’s been close to certain won’t end with him getting shanked in a back alley.

***

The job goes well, and the next morning Gin shows up at the room he’s staying in (how did she even _know_ ) and quickly banishes his early-morning grumpiness by presenting him with three-hundred-and-sixty credits.

When he asks why, she says they gave her a bonus for doing the job so quickly. 

Karn knows better to try and ask who ‘they’ are.

***

He takes another job with Gin, eight days after he begins following the spate of robberies conducted by a figure known as the Pink Lily.

It somehow ends with him on her tiny-ass excuse for a strider, all his worldly possessions on his back, having agreed to join her “crew”. He thinks it happened somewhere between waking up tied to a post under the dock, her freeing him (and herself) and getting breakfast at the nearest place they could find. 

“Why am I doing this? Should’ve just- fuckin’- should’ve just skipped islands like a _normal_ person.”

“Because I’m just that charming!” Gin chirps from her side of the strider, where she’s currently doing her best to coax the motor into functioning. 

Karn is almost certain she’s right. Maybe being first mate on a strider crew won’t be _so_ bad. “So, where are we going next, Captain?”

**Author's Note:**

> I swear you can literally see the point where I start getting tired
> 
> Kudos and comments appreciated


End file.
